Adherents.com: Religious Groups in Literature

34,420 citations from literature (mostly science fiction and fantasy) referring to real churches, religious groups, tribes, etc. [This database is for literary research only. It is not intended as a source of information about religion.]

simian, continued...

"Cheyenne Mountain did its best to educate their orangs and find them useful jobs out in society, but they still owned them. They came to get Esau once a month to breed him with females at the Center. He didn't blame them. Orangs were now extinct in the wild. Cheyenne Mountain was doing the best they could to keep the species alive and they were not unkind to them, but he felt sorry for Esau, who would always serve. "

simian

Commonwealth

1001980

Wolfe, Gene. The Shadow of the Torturer. New York: Simon and Schuster (1980); pg. 172.

"Confectioners, sellers of apes, and the like had set up their stands here and there. "

"'And in case you're wondering, the answer is no, I'm not a lesbian. I am relentlessly heterosexual, as much because of my San Fernando Valley middle class background as anything. But I will admit that sometimes I grow tired of men and what I call their baboon demonstrations.' "

"He blinked and looked at them oddly like a monkey peering at a strange fish. "

simian

galaxy

2029

Quick, William T. Planet of the Apes. New York: HarperCollins (2001)

[Novelization by William T. Quick, based on motion picture screenplay by William Broyles, Jr; Lawrence Konner and Mark D. Rosenthal] Book jacket: "Trillions of miles from an Earth in political and ecological turmoil, Captain Leo Davidson has crash landed on a different world--a terrifying place where people are in chains . . . and apes rule. Here, beneath twin suns, humans are lower creatures to be cornered, captured and broken, suitable only for the amusement of their simian masters; for hard labor, laboratory experimentation, and breeding. " [The entire novel, of course, focuses on a planet ruled by simians. Other refs. not in DB.]

simian

galaxy

2029

Quick, William T. Planet of the Apes. New York: HarperCollins (2001); pg. 44.

"A gorilla.

It was a damned gorilla. Davidson skidded to a halt before he ran full tilt into the beast. The gorilla spread his unnaturally long arms wide, opened his mouth in a yawning growl, and showed Davidson a maw full of yellowed fangs.

Which was bad enough. What was worse was that the gorilla wasn't just some overhyped refugee from this planet's equivalent of a zoo. Across his massive barrel chest the animal wore an armored metal breastplate, finely worked with strange shapes and carvings. His head was protected beneath a full metal helmet that looked as big as a cooking pot. The beast also carried a sword in a scabbard at his waist, and wore a suit of dark, massive armor that protected his huge flanks. "

[Year is estimated.] "Soon he had a theory. The students were avoiding him because he was a chimpanzee! It had stunned him. For three months solid he dropped everything to study the problem. He read the protocols governing humanity's patronhood over his race, and grew outraged over the ultimate authority Mankind held over his species--until he read about uplift practice in the galaxy at large. Then he learned that no other patron gave a four-hundred-year-old client race seats on its high councils, as Mankind did. " [A central element of this novel is the sentient, genetically enhanced dolphins and chimpanzees. The chimpanzee Charles Dart is one of the main characters. Chimpanzees aren't a religion, of course, but a separate species.]

[Year is estimated. The Uplift War is the sequel to Startide Rising. As in the previous novel, the culture and psychology of genetically 'uplifted' dolphins and chimpanzees--who are now sentient--are central elements of the book.]

Pg. 84: "But ever since the disaster at NuDawn, everyone knew how hoons felt toward the upstarts of Earthclan. As a neo-chimpanzee--from a barely fledged client race, indentured to humans--Harry expected only snobbery from Twaphu-anuph. " [Harry, an intelligent neo-chimpanzee, is one of novel's major characters.]; Pg. 87: "Fortunately, most neo-chims are deaf to psi stuff. "

"Now, in the dinner theater of the Sambusai Sands, the Gombe Stream Chimps were reenacting one of the final episodes of the Joshua Kampa legend... the mimicry of Lisa Chagula's chimpanzees seem especially intrusive, a violation of something sacred...

"The fire monkeys sat in a circle around the edges watching her, almost as fascinated by her muddy exertions as they had been by her hair. From time to time, one of them dipped a tentative paw into the water and then yanked it out hastily and stuck it in his mouth.

Good, Delanna though, that means they'll stay out of it. But the next afternoon when she came out armed with a broom handle for getting at the packed mud inside the spring, two of the monkeys were sitting in the water up to their chests, languorously trickling water over their heads.

'Out!' Delanna said, wading in and smacking them with the business end of the broom. 'You didn't lift a finger to help me, so you don't get to bathe in it. It's my spring.' " [Many other refs. to fire monkeys in novel, not in DB.]

Simmons, Dan. "The Death of the Centaur " in Prayers to Broken Stones. New York: Bantam (1992; c. 1990); pg. 306-345.

[Half of this story is a story-within-a-story: An elementary school teacher entertains his students every day with a serial fantasy story about three main characters: Raul the centaur, Gernisavien the neo-cat, and Dobby the sorcerer-ape.] Pg. 309: "The centaur, the neo-cat, and the sorcerer-ape moved across the endless Sea of Grass... "

"...a harnessed chimpanzee led a blind girl across the playground. 'By the time Timothy's three, he'll be ready for a seeing-eye ape,' she insisted... 'Orangutans are the cheapest, but the chimps are smarter and easier to care for.' "

...An old black woman in a nurse's uniform lay snoozing on a deck chair, her crinkled body shaded by a red beach umbrella to which a chimpanzee--Phoebe was right, an actual goddamn chimpanzee--was tied by a leather leash. Were the chimp to panic, Julie realized, it would pull the umbrella like Samson wrecking the Temple of Dagon... " [More about the chimp, not in DB.]

"'This is amazing, Mulder. The facial features of this creature are that of a parasitic worm, but expanded a hundred times. yet its body is that of a primate--an ape, or a gorilla, or even a human being.' "

simian

New Mexico

2008

England, Terry. Rewind. New York: Avon Books (1997); pg. 4.

"'A zoo. And you media types were gorillas. Of course, a couple of agents and soldiers acted like muddleheaded baboons...' "

Pohl, Frederik. The World at the End of Time. New York: Ballantine (1990); pg. 232.

They've got all kinds of stuff in there,' he was saying. 'You would'nt believe all of it. There's one whole chamber that's full of frozen sperm and ova, animals that they brought from Earth and never started up here. Whales! Termites! Chimpanzees--' "

simian

Oklahoma

1943

Bishop, Michael. Brittle Innings. New York: Bantam (1994); pg. 400.

"She didn't cry, but her bottom lip pooched out and rolled over on itself like a chimpanzee's. "

"But the biggest mistake Stapledon had made [in his novel Odd John], John thought, was his character's self-sufficiency. Stapledon compared his Odd John to a human being among apes. But a human being raised by apes isn't a superior ape. In all the qualities that matter to apes, he's not much of an ape at all. And if he feels contemptuous of the apes, it's only the automatic contempt of the rejected outsider. " [More, pg. 83.]

simian

Ontario: Toronto

2000

Sawyer, Robert J. Calculating God. New York: Tor (2000); pg. 172.

"Susan once quipped that the only piece of scripture I knew was the Lawgiver's Twenty-ninth Scroll:

Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

It's what Cornelius read to Taylor near the end of Planet of the Apes. Powerful words, and, like Dr. Zaius, I've always tried to live by their injunction. "

'Ape woman?' Touffet said irritably. 'You are saying Lady Charlotte is a carnival attraction? Covered in hair and scratching herself?'

'No, no,' I said. 'She's a primate-rights activist, claims gorillas and orangutans should be allowed to vote, be given equal standing in the courts, and all that.'

'Are you certain this is the same person?' Touffet said.

'Completely. Her father's Lord Alastair Biddle, made his fortune in artificial intelligence. That's how she got interested in primates. They were IA research subjects. She founded the Primate Intelligence Institute. I saw her on television just the other day, soliciting funds for it.'

...'She says nothing at all about apes.' [in the letter]

'Perhaps one of her orangutans has got loose and committed a murder...' "

"'He chose it himself. I don't believe in picking names for primates as if they were pets. Our research here at the Institute has shown that primates are extremely intelligent. They are capable of high-level thinking, computation skills, and self-awareness. D'Artagnan is a conscious being, fully capable of making personal decisions. He's scored 95 on IQ tests. He named himself after one of the Three Musketeers. It's his favorite book.' " [Many refs., most not in DB.]

"One after another, she set them all free--the satyr, Cerberus, the Midgard Serpent. Their enchantments vanished as they left their freedom, and they leaped and lumbered and slithered away into the night, once more a lion, an ape, a snake, a crocodile... " [Also, pg. 21.]

"This was about a white man who wanted to shoot gorillas in Africa. As gorillas were very rare in that part of the jungle, everyone considered it very doubtful that he would find any. After only ten minutes he came back saying he's already shot thirty, and can he have some more ammunition? Of course, no one believes him, so to prove it he shows them the bicycles the gorillas have been riding. "

simian

United Kingdom: London

1995

Ryman, Geoff. 253. New York: St. Martin's Press (1998); pg. 112.

"This morning James attended London Zoo to examine an old, sick gorilla. To examine gorillas he has to fire tranquilizer darts at them. The gorillas have learned what the darts are. They've taken to flinging them back at their handlers. When the keepers get close, the animals stab them with the needles and send them to sleep as well. All in good fun. " [More.]

"My picture career had died years ago and I was broke. I went to NBC with an idea for a television series.

Tarzan of the Apes ran for four years. I was executive producer, and on the screen I played second banana to a chimp. I was the first and only blond Tarzan. I had a lot of points and the series set me up for life. "

"For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. "

"Sitting across from me was this guy that I've never seen in the group before. Another ape. I'm no specist; I know the correct term is Simian-American. It's just that this monkey was really fine, a lot better looking than the cop on the bus. I started looking around the room, I didn't want to just sit there and gape ant him. In the meeting guys will share about how they sexualize the other men that are in the room with them. They're always thanked for their honesty afterward, but you don't want to be caught in the act. Besides, I didn't want to make my monkey uncomfortable. He was the only simian in the room. I saw some familiar faces and nodded hello. I didn't see my church date anywhere. Wherever I looked though, my eyes always came back to that ape.

He was big. Huge, really; he obviously spent a lot of time at the gym. " [More, not in DB.]

[Year estimated.] "Thirty-two sixth graders from Holmes Elementary lined the rails that protected the glass of the Gorilla Room from fingerprints... three were looking at the gorillas. Anders approached one of these three. It was his job... 'We have a mixture of lowland and mountain gorillas,' he told the boy in the baseball cap... 'I know which is which... because they're my gorillas. Now, some experts argue the noses are different or the mountain gorilla's hair is longer, but I've studied the matter and never seen that.'

There were thirteen gorillas inside the exhibit. Five sat on rocks at the back. One baby played with a tire swing, batting it with her feet and turning an occasional summersault through the center... " [Entire story is about the gorillas in this exhibit which, it turns out at the end of the story are actually mechanical simulacrums in the Hall of Extinction.]

simian

Washington

1905

Gloss, Molly. Wild Life. New York: Simon & Schuster (2000); pg. 65.

Pg. 65-67: Jacko the Chimpanzee; Pg. 67: orang-utan; gorilla

simian

Washington, D.C.

1999

Anderson, Jack. Millennium. New York: Tor (1994); pg. 273.

"'...Just remember 2001.'

'I started to watch it once, on HBO. I thought it was supposed to be about spaceships. It was about gorillas hitting each other with sticks.' "

Pg. 128: "Devi-en... was well aware of the difference between the Hurrians and all the other intelligences in the Galaxy. The Hurrians alone were so small; they alone were tailed; they alone were vegetarians--they alone had escaped the inevitable nuclear war that had ruined every other known intelligent species. "; Pg. 135: "Devi-en, panting, with his fleshy nose quivering slightly, advanced to receive him, and the creature (whose unpleasantly hairless face had become oily with some sort of fluid secretion) yelled, 'Holy Toledo, a monkey!'

Again, Devi-en understood the second part. It was the word for little-primate in one of the chief languages of the planet. " [The main alien species in this story are the monkey-like Hurrians. Throughout the galaxy they selectively breed the dominant species on planets recovering from inevitable nuclear wars so those species are docile, but they're baffled about why Earth hasn't had a nuclear war yet.]

"How am I, Robot, to distinguish between the following entities: 1. A human idiot. 2. Another robot. 3. A baby. 4. A chimpanzee. " [Other refs., not in DB, including a table on pg. 173 comparing these beings.]

Pg. 29: "He knew she was carrying a very heavy torch and convinced her she ought to put calipers away and take a field trip of a few weeks to Jane Goodall's camp in Tanzania and have a look at Goodall's chimps. "; Pg. 40: chimpanzee; baboon [More. Other refs. not in DB. Also pg. 96-97, 105.]

"'Did you know that Carlos is literally one-of-a-kind? He was the subject of one of our very first attempts at adult transgenic therapy. DNA from the African mountain gorilla was spliced into his chromosomal sequence, causing increased muscular and a skeletal development. Really! Believe it or not, he used to be my size, back when we first sprung him from some awful Cuban prison.'

Ohmigosh, Roberta thought in amazement. The big bruiser really is part gorilla! She had to resist a sudden temptation to peek over the back of her seat to take a closer look. I knew it! So what does that make him anyway? A Homo simian? "

Pg. 48: "'...Do you know? Bob the Gorilla blew it. Pharaoh the Banker kicked the bucket...' "; Pg. 135: "Even though I had forgotten everything--the master key and Monkey. What does that mean? It means that I really am a good guy, after all. "

"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. "

"Well, as I see it those long-limbed high-cheekboned, super-strong, genetically engineered mutants are no more my race than are the chimpanzees that the Draka geneticists used for their early experiments. "

simian

world

1984

Adams, Douglas. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. New York: Harmony Books (1984); pg. 1.

"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. "

simian

world

1996

Bear, Greg. The Forge of God. New York: Tor (1987); pg. 91.

"When Minelli answered, Edward imitated Curly again, and Minelli did a perfect 'Whoop hoop ooop.' Reslaw joined in, and Stella laughed, until they sounded like a laboratory full of chimpanzees.' And that was what they became, chittering and eeking and stomping the floor. 'Hey, I'm scratching my armpits,' Minelli said. 'I really am...' "

simian

world

1996

Bradbury, Ray. "The Ghost in the Machine " in Quicker Than the Eye. New York: Avon Books (1996); pg. 167.

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